Artist•Wilderness•Connection: Day 6, Part 1

Today is the day our guys are coming…we’re so excited to see them! We clean the cabin, moving some of our stuff to make room for them. We make potato salad for dinner and wrap the onions to bake in the fire pit.

Recipe: Take smallish onions with ends cut off and outer skin removed. Put about a tbsp butter on top, salt & pepper. Wrap in foil so that it doesn’t leak. Cook on fire about an hour.

Next, we go to the barn and check for wood. I haven’t mentioned the barn before but it is situated up on a flat spot on the hill behind us and a short hike from the cabin. There is also a makeshift corral for horses. It’s used for the trail crews that come through and maintain the trails throughout the Bob Marshall Wilderness complex.

Gini’s painting of the barn for our Hockaday “2 Sides to Every Story” exhibit. ©Gini Ogle, “Traveler’s Rest”, 18″ x 24″, oil

Unfortunately there isn’t any wood at the barn but we find clippers and bring those back so that we can clip back the brush on the path down to the beach from the rock.

The path from the beach to the cabin gets more overgrown with each day. We decide to clip back the thorny wild roses to protect our bare legs as we walk through. The rock to the left is what we have to climb as the last part of getting to the top where the cabin sits.

We have to collect wood for the fire and we find a downed log and break off all the branches we can. We have to get the branches into manageable pieces. I have my hiking boots on so I’m the “stomper.” Gini holds a large branch over the those that I stomp to keep the pieces from flying up. It works great until I stomp one that is so strong it sends the branch flying up and smacks me on the side of the leg. Pain!! I yelp and sit for a minute letting the pain subside. It’s not too bad and I’m back in action in no time.

We get all the wood down to the beach. We find some more largish pieces as stokers. We’re tired…what an enormous amount of effort just to survive! Never mind painting!

Gini, a tough wilderness woman, splitting logs.

I do my share and saw logs that are too big to split.

It’s already about two o’clock and we decide to go to Our Quiet Place to journal and wait for our guys to arrive. We are only there about fifteen minutes when we hear Randy’s voice saying, “look what we have here!” They both enter Our Quiet Place and our tough guys look like beat puppies. It is another hot day and it reminds us of our day hiking in. We hang for a little while to let them rest and then take them to the cabin.

We show the guys around and go down to our beach. They are impressed with our set up. They are our resupply crew: Randy brought chocolate, salad, grapefruit, beer, scotch, ice cubes (yes, can you believe it!), and meatloaf. John is loaded down with camera gear to photograph and film us. He also contributes fresh carrots, celery, and broccoli.

Knowing the guys will need some time to get settled and unpack, I go back to Our Quiet Place to finish writing in my journal. I’m a little behind with my journaling so I complete another day’s overview and do a couple watercolors. John joins me and helps me pack up my art supplies and we head back to the cabin.